Joe’s Weather Blog: Another summer dose of heat (WED-9/13)

Joe’s Weather Blog: Another summer dose of heat (WED-9/13)

Good afternoon…a great but warm-ish afternoon in the region today as temperatures are in the low-mid 80s. The other good thing about today is that the dew points continue to be rather reasonable but there has been a subtle trend upwards over the past few days and that may continue somewhat into the weekend. Another chance that is going to be noticed is that the winds will gradually be coming up as well. We haven’t had much of a southerly wind of significance lately but we may be looking at 20-30 MPH gusts on Friday and perhaps Saturday as well.

Forecast:

Tonight: Clear and pleasant with lows in the 60-65° range.

Thursday: Mostly sunny and warmer. There may be a few more clouds at times as well. Highs in the 85-90° range

Friday: Pretty much more of the same with some additional wind too. Gusts to 30 MPH possible

Discussion:

Our temperatures for the month so far are running about 3.4° below average…and we may be eroding that value quite a bit over the next 5-10 days as the overall theme is a milder forecast for the Plains for the next 10 days or so.

The main item of interest in the KC weather picture is a slow moving cold front which may try and weasel into the region as we head towards the end of the weekend. How far south the front gets and how far south of the KC area it can get remains to be seen though. There won’t be a lot of push to the front…but there may be some rain/storms to help it along it appears. So later Saturday night into Sunday is a bit of a weather issue.

We can certainly use the rain as today will be the 17th straight dry weather day in the KC area. The air has also been very dry (low dew points) and that has helped to dry out the soils quite a bit. I’ll post the updated drought monitor report tomorrow afternoon since it updates on Thursday.

I don’t want to get too involved in the Sunday chances though at this point. The front in question will be going into a rather stout southerly flow of air…and with the push being fair at best…I’m curious to see how far south it can penetrate.

Aside from that aspect of our weather, again the overall trend is a warm one for the next 10 days or so. Take a look at the GFS model data…it’s pretty warm. Now it does get a bit tougher to actually get to 90° towards the back half of the month. The average high drops into the 70s mostly…so I’m not sure we can get too many 90s out of this…but the records for the back half of the month are well into the 90s to around 100° for most of the days…so it’s not impossible to get toasty.

As we heat up…and as we start to see the dew points creep back up too…any wave or front that gets close to the region will have the opportunity to create storms/rain…so a wetter back half of the month looks like a certainty (considering we won’t have a drop for the 1st half of the month).

Just putting this out there now…odds are we won’t break any records but in case some were curious…the driest Septembers…

As mentioned though earlier…the overall trend is milder for the back half of the month. There will be an occasional cool shot but it may not last too long.

One final note…there is still a hurricane out there…Jose…right now though I’m not thinking it will directly effect the SE part of the country…but’s it’s something to watch because in a weird way…the Northeast part of the country could be weirdly affected depending on how the upper air pattern evolves in about a week or so.

That’s it for today…I have a few pictures that you sent in to catch up on…so let’s start with this shot from Savannah Whitesell of a smokey sunset near Paola, KS